I’m sure that by now many of our readers have heard that Westminster Seminary (Phila.) and Dr. Peter Enns have come to mutually agreeable terms, and that Dr. Enns’ tenure as prof. of OT at WTS is now officially over (see here). Some have taken this latest announcement in the Enns-gate controversy as an opportunity to continue mocking the Seminary for its fundamentalist and sectarian ways (see here, and here), others view this as a great day for Westminster and the cause of orthodoxy in America (see, for one example, some of the comments on this thread).
I, for one, don’t really buy in to either of these perspectives. I am not convinced, as many seem to be, that Westminster is Satan’s playground or a place where the chief concern of the “powers that be” is to avoid cutting edge scholarship and/or to perpetuate schism. But at the same time, I cannot view anything that has happened in this controversy as a good thing. Even if this mutually agreeable settlement between the respective parties is more desireable than a number of other outcomes which might be imagined, it is not necessarily good. At the end of the day, a good servant of Christ is out of work and has surely suffered much turmoil and humiliation. And, conversely, at the end of the day, a good school has lost one of its most notable professors and has also undergone tremendous turmoil and humiliation (from the tenured faculty on down to first year students). Splits and divisions amongst Christians, especially of this sort, are never “good,” even if they may at times be necessary.
But one thing I feel constrained to combat is the seemingly prevalent insistance that Westminster and other seminaries like it, simply because they see fit to hold fast to their confessional identity, are somehow doing a dis-service to the church by “avoiding the difficult questions” in the name of a confessional orthodoxy. For some reason it is assumed that seminaries simply exist as places to heap academic information onto students so that they can have a good understanding of the “cutting edge” scholarship being done in the various biblical-theological disciplines. While this no doubt ought to be a primary concern for most academic institutions, it is not so, or at least it ought not be so, for seminaries.
Seminaries exist to serve the church, not the academy. And in the case of confessional seminaries, they exist to serve very particular kinds of churches. Thus, the main function of a seminary is not to simply provide academic training (though seminaries must not neglect doing rigorous academic work), but rather to provide a place where pastoral theological development as well as spiritual maturity and insight may be developed among and instilled within the future leaders and teachers of Christ’s flock. This does not mean that the faculty of confessional seminaries ought to avoid the best scholarship available in their respective fields, but it does means that they should be engaging this scholarship for the purpose of training future pastors and teachers to minister in the actual churches which they exist to serve.
Surely it is possible to strike something of a balance here. WTS Philly is a confessional school whose primary function is the training of pastors for confessionally Reformed churches. Thus, the biblical profs. at a place like Westminster should definitely be highly trained in the languages and up to date on the best scholarly work in Biblical Studies being done today, but they also should be knowledgable in historic Reformed theology, especially that of the Reformed Confessions, because their primary function (apart from which they serve no meaningful purpose) is to train pastors for particular churches; in this case, confessional Reformed churches.
This being the case, confessional seminaries like WTS, and the biblical studies professors in confessional seminaries, are in a unique position of having to balance concerns which “broader” theological schools and academic institutions don’t have to deal with. Thus, it is definitely not out of line for a confessional seminary to ask its Bible profs. to adhere to their confession, and to teach confessional views in their classes (while not brushing aside the “difficult questions”), because the church quite simply is not the academy. If it happens that certain professors at confessional seminaries need to forsake their confession, and thus leave the institution which upholds that confession, because of where they think the evidence brought to the table by the “best” schoalrship being done in their particular field of study is leading them, then so be it. But it is certainly not a mockable or unreasonable thing for a confessional seminary to ask all of its professors to adhere to and to teach confessional views.
Now, Pete Enns may have been an excellent example of one who held to and taught confessional views in class while not neglecting to deal with the difficult questions during his time at WTS. I have never been in a class with him, and I’ve never talked with him personally, so I can’t be sure. I’ve seen plausible points from both sides on the issue, and having read Dr. Enns’ book and all the other documents released by the seminary, I can see how it is possible to read him in more than one way. (Though the way he asks to be read is to my mind the better of the two.) So, it is possible that the seminary may have indeed erred in its assessment of Enns and his work. However, it certainly does not err in expecting its professors (in the biblical studies department no less than in other departments) to be confessionally Reformed by their own convictions, and to consistently teach from a confessionally Reformed perspective in their classes.
Jonathan,
Some of the other critiques of WTS, that is the good ones, from Joel Garver and others, seem to say more than just “Boo Confessionalism!” (though of course, I don’t think most of those confessionalists are even trying to contextualize the confession or the Reformed tradition in the first place), but rather are accusing the leadership of WTS of making Enns the fall-guy for a much deeper fault-line.
WTS seems to be an institution that is attempting to do a 180, as even D. G. Hart has pointed out. Early on they jettisoned so much tradition. Murray was all about redefining covenant theology. Kline pretty much redefined theology of God. Hardly any of the faculty now holds to the Reformed position on creation or government.
Much of Tim Enloe’s criticisms of Van Til could and should be extended to the whole of Westminster Seminary. Van Til was a “Reformed chauvinist” because WTS was. They still seem to be using the old false criticisms of Aquinas and pre-Reformation traditions.
So, the criticism that I’ve heard which seems to have some teeth to it is that the Seminary is not being honest in all of this and is indeed engaging in heavy-handed police tactics to overshadow this reality.
Now I didn’t care for Enns’ book. I wouldn’t want the theology of Enns’ book to be taught at a Reformed Seminary. BUT, I do think he got his theology from Westminster, and I think that Westminster needs to say that.
Hey Steven,
Of course, Westminster is not above criticism by any means. I didn’t mean to imply that it is. It was the “bad” sort of criticism (of the “boo confessionalism” variety) which I have in mind in this post, examples of which are linked above.
(BTW: hope you had a great time in FL… wish I could have joined y’all down there.)
Steven’s basic point is correct. I disagree with putting Murray and Van Til in this camp, though, because both were strict Biblicisticicalistic (whatever the word is) traditionalists. Those men rethought some issues because of strong evidence inside the Bible, not “in the light of” a thimble-full of shards and fragments that remain from the ocean of the ancient near east employed by unbelieving scholars (who it seems are exempt from Romans 1) to create fantasy notions of the Bible’s context. Sadly, from my point of view, from old Princeton to Young to Kline to Dillard to Longman to Enns there is a tradition of “soft liberalism” when it comes to the so-called Old Testament. Biblical chronology, days of creation, authorship of Ecclesiastes, etc. have been up for grabs for a long time. Enns’s neo-heilsgeschichte notions go too far for the WTS tradition, but even here I doubt if there would have been a problem save for his — I think it must be said — pretty sloppy book, and the scandal it caused. If ever a book needed some peer review, this was it.
I’m glad that the men involved have come to an amicable parting of the ways. I count Pete Enns as a friend. We do disagree on a lot of things, though!
I wouldn’t put them in the same “camp,” but I would note that a spirit of reinvention was shared by all.
“Spirit of reinvention.” That’s a fruitful way to put it. Let me just offer by way of clarification of my own ideas, that I am all for a critical engagement with tradition. The idea that our generation can stand on the shoulders of giants to see if we can see farther than they could is an old and very respectable idea in the Western theological tradition. It is, I think, largely what the Reformers themselves (whatever excesses and blindspots they may have had) were trying to do.
However, it seems to me that there is a very great difference between (1) acknowledging one’s intellectual and cultural debts by saying “I am standing on the shoulders of giants to see if I can see farther than they could,” and (2) sneering at one’s intellectual and cultural debts by saying “Giants, pah! They were unbiblical children whose ideas I am better off without as I engage the Bible as if no one else has read it before me.” One is a constructively critical engagement with tradition, the other is Kant’s “enlightenment” project of daring to cast aside external constraints so as to “think for oneself.”
This is how I take the basic Van Tillian project, moored as it seems to me in Modernistic subjectivism (only the regenerate can really understand things) and half-informed, question-begging contempt for the past. And, from what Steven said above, it sounds like the problem goes beyond Van Tillianism per se and into more foundational issues of how Reformed theology itself is being done in the Modern context.
Honestly, Steven, I cannot see John Murray as having a spirit of reinvention. He was exceedingly cautious, and grounded in earlier theologies (such as those of the seceders and covenanters). It was his very unwillingness to move outside the boundaries that make his writings so turgid. Van Til, otoh, saw himself in a large conversation and put loads of stuff out in pre-formed versions to elicit feedback. Here again, however, CVT saw himself as combining Warfield and Kuyper. And contempt for the past??? Hardly. Tremendous respect for forebears is what motivated CVT to engage his gift (which was the gift of exorcism). The man who critiqued C.S.Lewis’s apologetics also read the Narnia books night by night to his dying wife.
The kind of confessionalism and the kinds of attitudes you’ve encountered at RTS are, in fact, new. From such a blinkered attitude WTS does look “inventive,” but in fact the Reformed faith has always been “inventive” in the way WTS was. Or at least in the way Murray, Frame, CVT were/are.
Tim, I’d like to know your take on Philip K. Dick’s classic *The Man in the High Castle.* It is, imo, the best exposition of Romans 1 ever written. It is certainly my own perspective on how principalities and powers operate. And, yeah, it’s about as “Vantillian” as one can get.
Rev. Jordan,
I haven’t read that one, sorry. Sounds very interesting, from Wikipedia’s summary.
From your #6 to Steven, it seems that the qualification, which I have stated several times in recent weeks is correct – that is, it is extremely important to distinguish between Van Til and Van Tillians, and to recognize that even among Van Tillians there are enough sub-schools such that too much generalization isn’t going to be helpful. But I guess unless some new vocabulary is invented (like, “Van Tillianism 1,” “Van Tillianism 2,” Van Tillianism 3,” etc.), it’s going to be hard to avoid generalizations and thus avoid stepping on the toes of those who don’t quite exactly fit them.
It appears that you disagree with Frame on VT’s willingness to converse with outsiders; Frame says VT wasn’t willing to do so, and that he all but explicitly said that God had given all truth to the Reformed tradition and everything else had to be judged in the light of Reformed theology. Frame’s view resonates with me not just because of the snotty, sneering manners of many VTians I’ve encountered on the Internet, but also because of VTs own oft-repeated refrain about degrees of “consistency” in one’s Calvinism. I’m beginning to suspect that the more “consistent” Calvinism gets, the less Christian it gets. In my opinion, only by situating Calvinism as a school within catholic Christianity, a school that has to fight for its right to be heard just like any other school and which has to demonstrate a willingness to take other schools seriously on their own terms (not terms that Calvinists invent out of their own heads to describe the “plain” truth about others) can Calvinism be kept from breeding sectarianism.
For me, the big problems with VT and VTianism are (1) the radicalizing of sola Scriptura that goes with an irrational suspicion of the God-giving faculty of reason’s ability to understand revelation, (2) a deeply uncritical reliance on Kantian subjectivism and idealism (while simultaneously mocking other Christians for using Plato and Aristotle), (3) the “closing of the Calvinist mind” that is performed by seeing Calvinism as a, dare I say it, autonomous-autoarcheic theological system, and (4) the frequently merely rhetorical contempt for non-Christian thought and the non-Reformed.
But hey, as I’ve also said several times in recent weeks, I’m still working on putting all the pieces together. I don’t have all the answers.
Tim,
“I’m beginning to suspect that the more “consistent” Calvinism gets, the less Christian it gets.”
That all depends on what you mean by “Calvinism.” I’d actually argue that as long as we keep in mind the fact that Calvinism is an entire system of divinity, and indeed, an entire world and life view, and therefore not reducible to five simple soteriological points (clever and convenient acronyms notwithstanding), consistent Calvinism is about as Christian as it gets. The remedy for the sort of “Calvinism” I think you’re talking about here is a heaping dose of Calvin himself, laced with some sprinklings of Kuyper and Bavinck, served with a side dish of Nevin and Schaff, and washed down with a glass of the Hodges (elder and younger) for balance.
Jim,
I’m probably closer to you than Tim on how I understand tradition and necessary critiques of it. I don’t mind that Murray was open to reinvention- well sometimes I don’t- but I do think you have to admit that he was willing to change a good bit of stuff: visible/invisible church, cov. of works, the definition of covenant.
These are fairly important doctrines, and I don’t think the TRs are completely wrong when they point to Murray as a root cause of the dreaded Federal Vision.
Clair Davis’ history of WTS also sees a spirit of innovation present, though he also notes the many many wars they fought.
Jonathan, point taken insofar as reduction to slogans vs. the “entire system of divinity” goes. I had a broader idea in mind, based on Calvinism’s relationship to the rest of the historic Christian tradition but perhaps it’s best to just let that go for now.
Tim/Jonathan – Permit me a brief “stream ‘o…” I offer it in part bc. I respect the opinions of the contributors here, and welcome input. This is tangentially related to the last interactions between the two of you.
This would be worthy of a separate discussion, and at some length, but what ought we make of the assertion that one finds in Calvin (John Calvin, not just his professed heirs) developments so radically at odds with the entire preceding history of exegesis and historical theology, that the question needs to be more carefully considered by those considered “Reformed” whether in fact there were not key places where Calvinism, even its purest form, got some things wrong, even markedly so.
For example, the idea that grace is limited to the eternally elect, and thus, one cannot speak in any sense of men falling from grace (thus, failing to do justice to the warning passages in any meaningful sense), or the idea that “the church” really means “the invisible church” (all of the Reformed symbols seems to go in that direction, it took John Murray some 300+ yrs or so later to challenge that move), or the idea that bc. some men never respond in faith to the gospel, this necessitates our confessing an eternal predestination to damnation (hence Van Til lambasting Berkouwer for failing to affirm the “equal ultimacy” of election/reprobation).
Reading the Anglican Brown and his Commentary on the 39 Articles, it has been interesting to note Brown’s observation that a very clear divergence/distinction exists between Calvin and Augustine with regard to the latter’s belief in an election to grace, justification, and sanctification, which can be forfeited thru unbelief and subsequent apostasy on the one hand, and an election to persevering grace on the other. Further, Brown goes on to note the Hooker bears more affinity with Augustine on these matters, and say, the Augsburg, then he does Calvin (Hooker modified the Lambeth articles, in some instances, rather severely, stopping short of Semi-Pelagianism, while at the same time holding a very high view of sacramental efficacy and also eternal election [to perseverance]).
This Augustinian and “catholic” reading of the matter seems to preserve the believe in sacramental grace on the one hand with an affirmation of the sovereignty of God in salvation on the other, whereas the proponents or modifiers at least, of Calvinism, will arguably flatten the biblical witness to press it into the mold of a predetermined system, the idea being that if we make the “system” harmonious, we have somehow done our job, the “truth” now no longer being used as it most often is in Scripture as synonymous with God’s he’sed, or His mercy, but now referring to a particular correspondence with an abstract system “out there” which it is NOW THE BIBLE’S DUTY to somehow mirror.
“Truth” moves from the realm of the Personal, in the context of the covenant and God’s covenant loyalty to His people, to the realm of the impersonal, to the theorem, to the overarching category/ies which may in fact be an abstract idol men have erected in the place of Him.
Tentatively offered, as I am reaching/groping after these things, and am so far from arriving, it’s silly.
I’ll jump in.
E Hoss asks:
I would reject the assertion full-out.
You’ve moved from Calvin to his heirs pretty quickly.
Let’s see-
Falling from grace: Definitely something in Calvin. He wouldn’t allow that the grace was univocal between elect and reprobate, but there are plenty of others in the history of the Church who made similar distinctions.
Invisible Church- I’m pretty much completely down with this notion, which means I like it. Augustine restricts the “true” Body of Christ to the Elect, so we’ve got historic precedent here too.
Election and Reprobation- Calvin never allows for “equal ultimacy” since he thinks Election is based on pure grace and reprobation is based on just condemnation of sin. In fact, a true “equal ultimacy” reading of election and reprobation would seem to be in the minority of Reformation thought.
Double Predestination, of course, has a long history prior to Calvin.
So moderate Calvinism wins again.
Your crypto-FV friend (shudder at the ecumenical butterflies),
Steven
Really…what’s the difference between a “liberal” seminary that won’t allow “conservative” professors and a “conservative” seminary that won’t allow “liberal” professors? Both have an equally misguided agenda and both find themselves acting well out of the purview of the local church.
Also, what does it mean to be confessional? Can we really call a church that embraces merely one of the standard Reformed confessions confessional? Originally, Reformed churches were confessional because they actually issued confessions instead of using them as a near infallible guide to inform and control their clergy. Why don’t Reformed churches today issue confessions of any worth that can rival the Heidelberg or the Westminster Standards? Is it possible that the Reformed tradition they want to defend isn’t really Reformed unless it is truly alive and making its own way in the here and now?
I see lots of Reformed folks using the Westminster Confession as a yardstick not only to define themselves but also as a way to understand Scripture. How that is different than a Roman Magisterium I do not know. At least our Catholic brothers are upfront and honest about the authority that they claim is theirs. All of this political strife about a professor like Dr. Enns signals to me that the soul of Reformedville is rarely honest with itself. Perhaps that is why we often see ‘Ichabod’ on our doors.
Frankly I was surprised that WTS had “tenure.”
It seems like Seminaries ought to have the ability to fire at will. It isn’t a university, after all.
Stephen – I think it is rather anachronistic to refer to developments which bear affinity with Calvin to be indicative of “moderate Calvinism”. I’ll discount that historical inaccuracy and try to read your response charitably.
With regard to Calvin on the “grace” received by the non-elect, it would be interesting to see if there is any evidence in his writings which would indicate the “grace” means anything MORE than the common operations of the spirit.
For Augustine, it was much more. For Augustine, men could be elected to grace, to justification, to sanctifiction, and finally fall away.
You’re not suggesting you’ve found evidence of this in Calvin are you?
It certainly IS the case that Calvin spoke of an historical or covenantal election (vide his Acts 3:11-25 comments), but when one compares his utilization of this category within his overall corpus, it would seem to utterly pale in comparison with what could be aptly called the decretal usage of that term.
Anglicans are not without warrant in asking whether or not for Calvin and his followers “chosen” “choosing” “elect” “election” takes on a usage rather foreign to the way in which the biblical writers utilized these terms. Paul, as a Jew, had before him the OT understanding of election, which in nearly every instance, related to an election to service, and election to responsibility, rather than a pre-mundane decree.
This is not to say that the pre-mundane decree is unimportant or irrelevant, only to ask whether or not the Calvinist reader (call him a “moderate Calvinist” I don’t really give a rat’s ass) wants to find it under every rock, and in handling the text in this way, commits a number of missteps.
Then also, in turn, the issue of whether one’s conception of “Truth” tracks in categories alien to the biblical witness, bearing more loyalty and concern for comporting with an overarching system (impersonalism) rather than conveying the voice of the living God (personalism).
It seems to me for all of his warts, Barth was on to something in some of these areas. Of course, Reformed people today at least, typically don’t read him, so that reference may fall on deaf ears.
Well terms are always lacking. I think that the term “moderate Calvinism” has enough of a received meaning over and against “High Calvinism” to be useful, even if I personally think moderate is the “true” Calvinism. It’s just easier to keep everyone on the same page. I certainly don’t concede that High Calvinism is the true Calvinism.
The issue of “common operations of the Spirit” is not an easy one. Common doesn’t simply mean generic, but rather that which is capable of being shared by elect and reprobate alike. Certain Reformed-ish (their tenacity is its own discussion) doctors included justification under the heading “common operations of the Spirit.”
I’m really not settled on Calvin. He clearly has a “temporary special calling.” This can be seen in the Institutes:
Add this to his numerous apostasy passages and you’ll get something comparable to losing real soteric benefits, though I would be surprised if you didn’t also find Calvin making some sort of equivocal distinction in order to preserve true perseverance of the Saints.
You certainly see a lot of this in his successors in England.
Kevin noted: “I see lots of Reformed folks using the Westminster Confession as a yardstick not only to define themselves but also as a way to understand Scripture. How that is different than a Roman Magisterium I do not know.”
Indeed. But of course, their own version of the WCF, sans such things as its literal 6 day creationism, its original theonomy, or its consensus verbiage on the issue of active/passive obedience.
Many modern TR Calvinists I’ve observed or interacted with have not even been able to admit the 3-4-5 ways in which they themselves depart from their own “strict subscriptionism.”
View the average discussion on many of the TR websites and this or that 20 or 30 something lemmings who has no business being an office-bearer in Christ’s church is arguing about how “Professor such and such – He’s actually ok HE’S IN LINE WITH THE CONFESSION”.
This is exceedingly troubling, as it shows a de facto trumping of the Canon through a tradition which, unlike Rome’s (as Kevin correctly points out), is not simply admitted and put on the table for what it is (ie., a coordinate authority with Scripture, or worse).
Troubling times in Reformed/Deformedville, admitting of no immediate and easy solutions. Rethinking the entire approach to ministerial training might be one place to start, among others.
Stephen – Helpful exchange here. Indeed the limitations of terms and their having a specific hue in 1960 when Van Til was attacking Berkouwer vs. 1560, underscores the challenge we face in trying to get our hands around these matters.
What’s your take on M.F. Sadler, particularly “The Second Adam and the New Birth.”
He seems to shy away from the “internal” or “effectual call” and for this, he is to be faulted. I found this to be the case with other fine Anglicans as well (i.e., it is not what they SAY but what they FAIL to say w/regard to certain thorny exegetical issues, that proves problematic).
The Anglican Brown wants to affirm “Justification” as a state vs. an act of God, such that one may fall from their justification. Augustine would classify such as “elect” in the sense of “elect to initial grace, faith, justification” but not elect to final perseverance.
Such texts as the parable of the unmerciful servant, or the dog being washed, returning to its vomit, or those “twice dead”, or those who “denied the Lord who bought them”, might give some priority to an Augustinian vs. Calvinian presentation.
I offer this tentatively…..
I really haven’t spent much time with Sadler (though I’m buds with the Editor :) ). I did notice that the whole language of “state of justification” was tossed around among the Anglicans when I was doing some of my Dort studies. Peter White’s book Predestination, Policy, and Polemic was a helpful survey.
One also thinks of Baxter. He held to a true falling away from justification. I’d be interested to see where he locates his view in the tradition.
Kevin,
I hear what you’re saying, but I think there are some misunderstandings about what concerns are conditioning the more balanced “confessional” folks out there. Surely, there are many who fit the bill of coming close to a Romanesque view of authority with the WS functioning as their infallible paper pope. However, the majority (of which I count myself a part) would simply say something like: our entire church has adopted a particular confession, and it takes a church to alter a confession.
Now, I agree with you certainly that many have adopted a far too narrow view of the meaning and purpose of a confession. This is not even a question in my mind, and I wasn’t meaning to imply this in the post. My sole purpose was to say that the fact that Westminster is seeking to hold fast to a confessional tradition, and by doing so is expressing the fact that it exists to serve particular churches, is not unreasonable or an occasion which should bring about mockery. Whether they are right in the process they have used to uphold the confession, or in their assessment of those they are excluding, is a different question entirely, and one I’d rather not comment on or discuss in this forum… for some fairly obvious reasons.
Tim #8, I’ve been unable to keep up with discussions here, for obvious reasons (the BH conference, mainly), so I’ve not read all your qualifications and caveats. I hope I haven’t done you an injustice.
True, CVT did agree with Warfield and Kuyper that Calvinism is Christianity come into its own. He was, though, an amil, and was not open enough to future revolutions.
I don’t understand your reference to Kant. CVT, as is oft said, turned Kant on his head. CVT’s main lifelong beef was with dialecticism/existentialism of Barth, and behind him, Kant.
But I’ll readily own up to a radical suspicion of “reason’s” ability to understand and organize creational revelation. I submit that everything the NT says about warring against principalities & powers means warring against man-created ideologies that are taken as commonsense. And the older I get, the more radical I become in this area. (!) Now, I’d go beyond CVT’s rational argumentation and insist that musical instruments are weapons of spiritual warfare in the Bible, and that until the Church once again sings Psalms long, loud, vigorously, and with a plenitude of weapons (instruments) in hand, the powers will continue to enslave the corporate minds of men.
FWIW.
#10 Steven writes: “but I do think you have to admit that he was willing to change a good bit of stuff: visible/invisible church, cov. of works, the definition of covenant.
“These are fairly important doctrines, and I don’t think the TRs are completely wrong when they point to Murray as a root cause of the dreaded Federal Vision.” EOQ
Sure. “Federal Vision” is pretty much infused with Murray. The point is that the three things you mention are NOT new with Murray, and Murray’s positions have lots of root in Dutch, Seceder, Covenanter, etc. Reformed thought (not to speak of Calvin and Bucer!). That’s Shepherd’s background as well. I cannot see anything radical in Murray; it’s just a more catholic kind of Calvinism than what is running the show in the PCA today. So, when you write “change a good bit of stuff,” that’s only true in one context.
Back in Murray’s and Van Til’s day, there was such a thing as broad international Calvinism, with Dutch, Afrikaner, Episcopalian/Anglican, and American thinkers meeting and interacting on a whole large range of issues. Journals. Meetings. Congresses. All by conservative Calvinists who saw Calvinism as “Christianity come into its own.” That does not exist today as it did then. Gone are the P.E.Hughes, the Hebden Taylors, the Dooyeweerds, Vollenhovens, Stokers, Schilders, Rushdoonys, etc. etc. You’d’ve been laughed out of court if you stood in the midst of this discussion and insisted that “covenant of works” terminology/doctrine is essential to Calvinism, or that “visible/invisible church” is essential to Calvinism. Those were options, not essentials.
Murray was not changing things or being radical. The radical who completely changed things was Kline: Gone to hell was the Christian weltanschauung — it’s all commongrace now and it’s a SIN (yes, a sin, a demonic action) to bring “intrusion” (Biblical) ethics into play and try to articulate a Christian worldview. Gone was optimistic amillennialism. Gone was any liturgical focus. Gone was the historic understanding of the covenants. And gone was any tolerance for the large Calvinistic tradition.
Kline fit the bill for a pseudointellectualistic brand of American evangelical pietism that Reformed people could embrace. That’s all it is, and that’s why it runs the show in the American evangelical pietistic Reformed denominations. Arminians who believe the 5 points of Calvinism — which is the ethos of American Reformed churches these days — can use Kline and feel smart. Authentic Calvinism is completely dead in the United States.
Elder Hoss writes #12: hence Van Til lambasting Berkouwer for failing to affirm the “equal ultimacy” of election/reprobation….
No, no, neau. Equal ultimacy of election and PRETERITION. There is no equal ultimacy of salvation and reprobation. CVT is very insistent on that point, following Murray, and insisting on the importance of the semicolon in WCF 3:7.
I don’t want to put myself into the position of being the defender of all things CVTian, but this is important enough to need correcting.
James is right there, except for this small point. Sometimes in the literature on this, reprobation is used to refer to both aspects of preterition unto predamnation, and at other times it is used to denote predamnation only.
Take care,
David
To Elder Hoss’s large question: I think we need to be careful in assessing the theologians, because it’s in their sermons that we would find a more Biblical treatment of some of these issues. Calvin’s commentaries on the Pentateuch, for instance, would never lead you to expect what you hear in his sermons on Deuteronomy (which could have been delivered by Rushdoony). Similarly, I would want to know if a more “moderate” or “Anglican” or “Augustinian” kind of Calvin comes through in his sermons. I only raise the issue. I’m not about to start my life over and try to become a Calvin scholar!
IMO the worst thing the Reformation did was invent the grammatical/historical scientific method approach to the Bible. It has had horrible effects, and the Enns controversy is only the latest. Eco’s *Six Walks Through the Fictional Woods* explains how the Bible actually works: Books create readers. The Bible is not understood “in the light of” questionable information from outside itself. For instance, the fact that sheep stink and are stupid is completely unimportant. What is important about sheep is what the Bible texts call attention to, and that’s it. I don’t need to know what a terebinth tree looks like. I can see where it appears in the Bible and what it means. It is only in the 20th c. that we seem to be crawling out of this quagmire with a new appreciation of typology and of the four-fold sense.
Rant mode off.
#25. Right. It was from CVT’s essay that I learned the supreme importance of precision in this area. The unsaved are bypassed by God’s decree, the backside of His deciding to save some; but (semicolon) they are condemned for their sins. I would not want to use the term “predamnation.” The WCF uses “bypass” and I think that’s healthier.
That’s a BIG distinction too. BIG.
Jim J – I would not object to that clarifier. Well, I think CVT was notorious for trying to tease out the trajectory or supposed implications of a given position and pinning THAT on the object (author) of his critique.
Barth is reported to have said that he did not recognize himself in reading Van Til’s critique, while he DID recognize the portrayal of others critical of his work just not agreeing with some of their sharper criticism (Berkouwer, Colin Brown?).
Sandlin and I were discussing this a while back and he observed that Rushdoony simply followed CVT’s critique bc. he respected him so (who wouldn’t, he was a godly man and a true warrior for Jesus) , and yet Van Til was writing on Barth before almost all of the Church Dogmatics had been put out.
(then also, some admirers of Thomas believe that CVT and the standard Reformed party line on Aquinas was also a hatchet job).
Be that as it may (I am no student of this), I do think you raise an important distinction between say the formal perspective of a theologian, and that which emanates from his expository and pastoral labors viz. the pulpit. Perhaps self-consciously constructing a system is part and parcel of the problem, whereas in prayer, preparation, preaching, there is a greater room for the Spirit to operate on men as they exercise the role of a veritable ‘nabi and not as professor/systematizer.
You raise an important qualification about Calvin in this light, which is well taken.
On another, quasi-related note, it seems to me that whereas a number of conservative OT guys (RK Harrison, for one) were obsessed with defending the correspondence of various events in the OT with a kind of evidentialist empirical approach to the Bible (i.e., “a sailor in Britain was reported to have been swalled by a whale akin to that described in Jonah”), some of their Neo-O or “moderate” counterparts like Childs or Eichrodt were really engaging the TEXT in very profound ways.
I buy the critique that BOTH Kline and Enns erred greatly in importing an alien hermeneutical key to the interpretative task (Kline actually admits that this is what he was “seeking”), and yet wonder whether there are indeed areas of profound grey when it comes to the merit of the larger corpus of 20th c OT work which gave us Eichrodt’s Old Testament Theology, or Child’s Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, or Exodus commentary, etc.
Pardon the musings/ramblings/rants. I welcome your thoughts on any of these things/cats….
Hey James,
Just a small note on the use of “pre-damnation,” it’s used by Turretin, so it has to be right, right?
In Preterition God unconditionally passes by and in so doing acts as King. In pre-damnation, God decrees to condemn on account of (foreknown sin, by permissive decree) and in so doing acts as Judge and legislator.
Take care,
David
Rev. Jordan, re: #22 –
No, I don’t think you’ve done me an injustice; I just hope I’m not doing you one.
My reference to Kant and VT is an issue I’m currently working on, and one for which, as I said earlier, I don’t have all the answers. My basic understanding at the moment is that by saying only the regenerate have the proper “categories” for understanding revelation, VT is operating within the Kantian framework of subjectivism. That is, our knowledge of reality is grounded on subjective conditions within ourselves. But this is just the old problem of the Modern world given to us by Descartes when traditional metaphysics and appeals to tradition itself were thrown out in the name of rebuilding “certainty” from scratch atop “clear and distinct ideas.” Thus, VTianism is one more form of epistemological Modernism, and not at all a “pure” biblical way of thinking as it is often said to be. But, I’m not a philosopher by training – just a humanities student – so I could have some things mixed up or at least just not adequately worked out yet.
I can’t follow you into the radical suspicion of reason. I’m afraid that worthies such as Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent and R.L. Dabney have convinced me that to distrust reason is to destroy the very ability to understand revelation at all, even special revelation. I don’t see how denying reason’s ability to at least “adequately” organize general revelation (even if only to render men without excuse, per Romans 1) doesn’t lead to denying reason’s ability to “adequately” organize special revelation as well. That’s where the Kantian angle comes in – since we deny reason’s ability because of the Fall, we’ll just throw in regeneration to make everything better. Again, knowledge of reality depends upon subjective conditions, and this is epistemological Modernism.
So it seems to me at my present state of thinking.
Jim – Van Til’s methodology could fall prey to the criticism Tim mentions insofar as he speaks in very broad categories rarely grounding much of his critique in exegesis. This is not to necessarily say his conclusions are at fault, only that again, he seemed at times to trace out trajectories in opposing systems of thought, and pin the assumed conclusions on the author as somehow representative of the individual’s actual thought.
A crude (but not irrelevant) analogy would be that of largely “topical” preaching….
Re. #29. To be sure, it’s in Barth’s earlier works, and vol. 1 of CD, that his dialecticism comes out. Friends of mine who have bothered to read Barth tell me that he gets better as he gets older. You’re right that CVT tends to push to the presups of someone’s writings, and Barth may not have recognized what CVT was getting at. It’s a lot easier now, because things tend to get clarified over time. That is, creational versus dialectical approaches are much easier to see and articulate. Boil CVT down and it’s Genesis 1:1. Period.
The complaints about Aquinas are silly, IMO. CVT and RJR and Dooyeweerd take Aquinas the same way he had been read for 600+ years and the same way Rome had been taking him for all that time. The explosion of the scholarly world after WW2 (the multiplication of universities, journals, etc.) has led to a reassessment of Aquinas. But to blame CVT for taking Aquinas the same way as everyone always has is pretty pointless.
Your complaint about how conservative OT scholars used to work is spot on. That’s the “historical” side of G-H gone to seed. I complained about this back in the intro. to my old Judges commentary. And you are also right that some liberals do better with the text itself, qua text, than the conservative tradition has done. It should not have waited until the last 25 years for people to notice that most of the Bible is written in chiasms. Dorsey’s brilliant job on Isaiah could have demolished liberalism a century ago.
But in the Reformed tradition, metrical psalms are regarded as just as good as real psalms. The text is not taken with sufficient seriousness. It’s the IDEAS in the text that matter. And that’s the evil.
James is right about Van Til on Aquinas. Everyone was doing very sloppy historical work back in the 50s-60s and onward. The problem was, too, folk like Etienne Gilson wasn’t helping. The neo-Thomists wanted a “Foundationalist” Thomas.
The problem is, a bad myth has been perpetuated, which needs deconstructing, but in a way that is not blame-gaming and chest-thumping.
David
#31. Tim, I can’t go back and re-read CVT, and I’m sure there are problems in him. I mostly agree with Frame where it matters. But, I doubt if CVT is simply grounding in the subjective regenerated consciousness. In Reformed theology, the Spirit proceeds alongside the Word, not merely through it as in Lutheranism. It is the Creator Spirit who guides creation and guides the minds of those submissive to Him. All men, since they breathe, have the Spirit with them, and hence all can get some things right. They know not to jump off a tall building. At the same time, this is pretty minimal.
Now, I imagine CVT probably had a conventional Syst.Theo. understanding of reg. versus unreg. persons, without the kinds of fuzzy edges I would want to bring in, such as temporary believers. I am in print questioning the whole notion of individual heart-regeneration, as you may know.
At the same time, the notion that the unbeliever benefits from the crumbs dropt from the Lord’s Table is certainly found in CVT, which means that unbelievers can and do get things right about the world and can see things rather clearly when discipled by the Kingdom. Moreover, humans being images of God cannot live without getting some things right. They use one aspect of truth to deny other aspects of truth. All of this is in CVT, along with his doctrine of creation-grace and other matters. CVT defended common grace against Hoeksema and Schilder.
As for “reason,” well that’ll depend on what we mean by the term. I’m all in favor of logical thinking. You and I could probably agree on good meanings of the term.
But when conventional apologetics demonstrates that there is “a god,” I agree with CVT that what it has done is provide a demonstration of an idol. There is no such thing as “God.” There is the Trinity. And this Triune God is not at the top of a scale of being, but is outside of being altogether as the creation of both kinds of being (heavenly and cosmic). So, I agree with CVT: I’m not interested in leading men into idolatry.
And, since the greatest idol available to the human race to use to block our consciousness of the Triune God is the creation itself, I expect men to organize their understanding of creation and of natural/human history precisely in such a way as to block out reality. The Jews managed to develop a myth of the Oral Torah in about 3 generations, after which they all believed it (and many do to this day) — and this myth enabled them to block out completely the revelation of Jesus as Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures. Rene Girard has shown another way in which men collectively block out reality so that in one generation a complete social upheaval and scapegoat murder is totally and completely forgotten. These are just two examples.
These are big deals. They are examples of almost total societal blindness, of the total reorganization of the world into a fantasy within which the people live. They may be quite reasonable and be able to do cool science on a daily basis, but they live in a fantasy world, a huge construct that seems to answer all the questions.
I think people like Thomas and Dabney, living in Christian societies with relative peace and reasonableness in evidence, can be pretty naive about how human societies work. Dabney’s reason did not lead him to a sane view of the human race. The South (my homeland) lived in collective insanity on this matter until the 1960s. The reality was there, but it was not seen, and what made reality unseen was a whole huge system of thought about race and history, reinforced in books, journals, sermons, jokes, separate water fountains, employment, education, lynchings, etc. etc. This was a Principality/Power, and it is an example of what I’m talking about.
Anyway, I’ve said that before, and what we really need to do is talk late into the night over some single malts, no? Eventually, we’d agree on everything.
Jim – Would it be your take that Childs and Eichrodt (among others) gave away the veritable farm, by capitulating to the alien presuppositions of Graf-Welhausen, before that, Duhm and others who essentially jettisoned supernaturalism entirely?
I recall reading Childs’ “Myth and Reality” scratching my head at the gymnastics and break-dancing some of these bright minds were engaging in, in the effort to on the one hand debunk completely the historical assertions of the text, while at the same time wanting to retain some notion of the Canon as “witness” to revelation, with some kind of normative value for the Church.
Then again, Childs wanted to argue for the “discrete witness” of each biblical book, as he reasoned that scholasticism flattened out the biblical witness to make it comport with a predetermined system. Arguably, his counter to “flattening” is conflicting or even irrational and competing voices within Scripture itself (thus priestly vs. prophetic ala Wellhausen’s cute dichotomy, etc.)….
#36. The Fathers called this stuff gnosticism. You get the ideas and lose the history.
Well, it’s a sad fact that the disciples of Childs and Eichrodt populate the mainline Liberal/increasingly insane Prot. denominations, many of which have been three sheets to the wind for decades now, viz. reimagining/configuring basic doctrines like the incarnation, atonement, etc. – all of this apart from the specific internecine battle of who is and who is not “Reformed.”
It is too bad, insofar as some of the exegetical work of a Childs or Eichrodt was, at points, breathtaking. Here I am specifically thinking of the section in Eichrodt’s OT Theology re the “Instruments of the Covenant”, as well as the latter part of Vol II where he sets the stage for the NT hope, engendered in part by the apostasy of the OT people of God.
Many of the Biblical Theology monographs out of England ca. 1930–1975 (Childs did 3 or 4) or so, packed a good deal of wheat interspersed with the anti-historical chaff.
Pastors and students of Scripture should not completely discount these men, notwithstanding the grave exegetical missteps and erroneous/alien importing of this or that extra-biblical hermeneutical lenses…
#38. Yes. Quite right. What has happened is that there’s just nothing left to say about the underlying sources, and so with Childs attention turned to studying the final redacted versions of the various books. Once that project began, more was written that can be of help to the Church. It’s still a mess, though. You’ve got to be very careful reading Milgrom and these men, because underneath they still believe in all the liberal bull-cookies, and they overlook important connections and allusion in the text because of it.
Rev. Jordan,
Re: #35, sure, VT admits unbelievers get some things right. But as Frame points out in his 1995 book on VT, VT sometimes gave with one hand and took back with the other. Sometimes his “antithesis” rhetoric was simply extreme, and someone who took that extremism and ran with it could not necessarily be blamed for, as it were, making VT “more consistent” with his own premises. VT did, after all, think that being “consistently” Reformed was what we should all be after. As I said way up above, my suspicion is that the more “consistent” this sort of thinking gets, the less Christian it is going to be. Today it’s being radically suspicious of reason; tomorrow it’s being radically suspicious of the presence of matter and time and history in the scheme of salvation. This downgrade of “consistency” is seen in those (self-professed) “most consistent” of Calvinists, the Reformed Baptists, but I can’t help but think its underlying premises are present in many ostensibly non-baptistic Reformed folks, too. Why else all this emphasis on the “spiritual” as over against the “natural” in such areas as eschatology and sacramentology? Why are the Holy Scriptures (plural) treated like “the Bible” (singular), and everything outside of them (it) thrown out? It’s because the spiritual has gobbled up the natural, revelation has taken the place of reason, and humanity has been split into “the Haves” (by grace) and “the Have-Nots” (by nature). This is just unbalanced, and, forgive me, pretty darn Gnostic-looking. I’ll take Aquinas’ grace perfecting nature over that any day.
As to your point about people living in Christian societies being pretty naive about how people work, couldn’t the reverse be said? Couldn’t it equally be said that people who want to live in a situation of “constant total war” between Us and Them are pretty pessimistic about how people and societies work? War rhetoric can just as easily overcome rationally balanced thinking as peace rhetoric can.
Lastly, as to people living in a fantasy world of a construct that seems to answer all questions, forgive me for being blunt, but what is the difference between the guy who is quite reasonable and thinks that Science answers all questions definitively and the guy who is quite reasonable and thinks Biblical Exegesis answers all questions definitively? Why does the guy who overemphasizes reason get slammed, but the guy who overemphasizes faith gets a free pass?
Mr. Enloe wrote: “As I said way up above, my suspicion is that the more “consistent” this sort of thinking gets, the less Christian it is going to be. Today it’s being radically suspicious of reason; tomorrow it’s being radically suspicious of the presence of matter and time and history in the scheme of salvation.”
But surely that’s a matter of what “consistent” means. Since the Scriptures/Bible (many/one, like God) are infinite in ramifications, increasing consistency to the Bible expands rather than contracts consciousness. It’s when Esther (a human version of Leviticus 16) and all kinds of other stuff is taken off the table and replaced by a tiny creed dealing with only a fraction of revelation that consistency becomes fanaticism (as it has in the PCA).
I don’t do much internet stuff. I don’t know anyone radically or even generally suspicious of reason understood as clear thinking. What the Bible says about idolatry means that persons outside a Biblical situation do NOT reason clearly, and in fact use cosmic reality as a way to block reality. On the other hand, back in my Russell Kirk days, I could never figure out what Right Reason (capital arr) was supposed to mean. Japanese shinto culture was quite reasonable to them. God speaks in words. “Reason” in Kirk’s sense seemed nothing but mysticism and Western-culture opinion.
You write: “Why are the Holy Scriptures (plural) treated like “the Bible” (singular), and everything outside of them (it) thrown out?”
The answer to the first question is the Athanasian Creed. As for the second, I ask, who does that? The Bible does not teach me about elephant veterinary. The Word/s from God do, however, have authority over all other purported truth claims. If the Bible says Abraham lived 175 years, then he did.
Continuing: “It’s because the spiritual has gobbled up the natural, revelation has taken the place of reason, and humanity has been split into “the Haves” (by grace) and “the Have-Nots” (by nature).”
Maybe some places. Not in what I learned. All ground is common ground, though no ground is neutral ground. Apologetics is not limited for a few proofs and arguments, but involves everything and uses everything. The Spiritual (capital ess) cannot gobble up the natural in CVT-type Calvinism, because the Spirit flows with the creation/nature from the moment of creation.
For the rest, your last two paragraphs, I gather you’ve missed my arguments. It’s just a fact that Calvin’s “common law of nations” is ridiculous when New Guinea is put into the equation. It’s a just a fact that paganism is full of internally rational descriptive systems about reality that are in fact false. Islam is very reasonable, and very cruel. Southern racism was very reasonable and based on lots of quantifiable evidence, and was also factually wrong and cruel. It seems quite reasonable to tribal people in India that a wife should be immolated with her husband, something that happens 100s of times annually now that the Christian rulers of India have departed and women are no longer protected. “Reason” is not going to change anyone’s minds here. (When it comes to protecting women, I believe we have been given swords for this.)
Perhaps, though, we’re just not communicating, and I don’t want to hijack you-guys’ blog, so I think maybe I should just leave it at that, for now anyway.
Interesting discussion. I’m beginning to think more and more that the majority of what we reject when we seek to create distance between ourselves and our mentors is their personalities. ISTM the problem you have with Van Til, Tim, is mostly his hard-ass, hyperbolic attitude. You can find most of the qualifications you want, as you seem to admit, but you’d rather the qualifications set the tone for his approach. I got Van Til mediated through Jordan and Frame before going back to read Van Til, so I never saw VT-ianism that way in the first place. And a lot of our attitude will be shaped by the context and purpose for which God creates us, so for myself I’m trying to be much more broadminded about how people say and do things. Much more perspectival. Just some commentary on the commentary here. .
Weston, well, Van Til was never really a “mentor” of mine. I came to apologetics via men like Sproul and Geisler and Corduan, advocates of the classical approach, and they shaped my early opinions of the presuppositional method. For a while I did attempt to give Van Til the benefit of the doubt, and even wrote many of my undergraduate papers within the framework supplied by Van Tillian apologetics.
However, as my ongoing graduate work is requiring me to spend much more time going over various classical texts, to engage with them much more thoroughly, I find that the traditional approach excoriated by Van Tillianism is more subtle than Van Tillianism allows for and I don’t believe it can be properly dealt with on those assumptions. I am in the process of collecting specific supporting examples for my view from sources as diverse as Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and Scotus, to name a few. While I haven’t got all the pieces put together yet, I’ve seen more than enough specificity to justify, I think, my present course of critique.
Rev. Jordan, well I hope that my becoming “Mr. Enloe” instead of “Tim” doesn’t mean I’ve become someone to be distanced from. I’m not trying to be offensive. I’m just trying to work through some complex issues based on the place where I am now, understanding that I’m not self-sufficient and need the input of others, particularly others who disagree with me, so that perhaps I don’t have to remain in the place I am now but can keep on maturing. That’s my intent in all this, anyway.
Your tone and approach indicate to me that you’re not the sort of Van Tillian about whom most of my remarks have been made. I’m talking about contentious, sneering, “better than thou” tribalists who think anything Reformed, as they narrowly understand “Reformed,” is just the cat’s meow of Christendom and who see very little good outside of the Reformed world. I’m talking about people who don’t bother to do any significant studying of their own outside of Reformed sources, but who have no trouble at all speaking from their self-imposed ignorant arrogance about all the “compromises” that other Christians are engaged in. These are the sorts of windbags who think there’s no philosophical backdrop at all in the discipline of Greek exegesis, that being able to exegete the Scriptures in the original languages somehow purifies their mind from all traditions and gives them privileged access to “plain truth” of the mind of God, that only damned Romanists and blinkered Arminians bother with cultural concerns, and that they themselves are so much better than everyone else because they have a “higher” and “more consistent” view of Holy Scripture. I’m talking about people who would, if it existed, plaster a bumper sticker on the back of their car that said “Reformed Theology said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
The reason this is relevant to Van Tillianism is that most of these quacks attribute these beliefs and attitudes to their having read some Van Til books, and whenever contrary information is presented to them you can hear the sound of their minds slamming shut like it was a battleship cannon going off right next to your ear. You yourself don’t come across to me in the above ways, and I could name half a dozen other Van Tillians I know personally who also don’t come across in those ways. So, like I said earlier, perhaps there needs to be a new vocabulary created to make necessary distinctions so as to avoid unhelpful generalizations. No doubt you’d want to argue that such people have grossly misinterpreted Van Til. So be it; let that argument be made. Nevertheless, from my own perspective on these issues I still have to agree with Frame that Van Til wasn’t cautious enough with some of his rhetoric, that he was rooted too firmly in the warmongering tradition of the early Fundamentalist battles with Liberalism, and that in some pretty significant ways he encourages Reformed tribalism. I also agree with Frame that a distinction should be made between Van Til’s personal positions and the “movement Van Tillianism” that has arisen in conjunction with his work. While I do have some principled disagreement with Van Til himself, it’s basically “movement Van Tillianism” that disturbs me the most.
Tim, my frien’, scrobe:
“Rev. Jordan, well I hope that my becoming “Mr. Enloe” instead of “Tim” doesn’t mean I’ve become someone to be distanced from.”
Nono. I just noticed that I kept being “Rev. Jordan,” instead of “Jim,” so I thought maybe I should address you in the same way.
I’m fine with your remarks. Poythress has written that nobody comes without baggage. The Bible is given to sort our baggage, and that involves not private reading but engagement in the whole church over all of time and openness to revolutions of understanding. I’m not sure I’ve encountered the kinds of “blank slate” exegetes you mention in the CVT world, but I’ll take your word for it. I’m not exactly “out there,” having been buried in Niceville, FL for nearly 20 years. NICE-ville, where theonomists go to retire. Or is it nic-EVIL-le?
For me, CVT in his historical comments functions as an exorcist. You gotta let a man do what a man’s called to do. I assume you know the history of apologetics at WTS?
CVT: Everybody’s wrong, somewhere.
Frame: Yes, but everybody’s got right things also, somewhere.
Poythress: Everybody’s right, depending on perspective. (!)
Exorcism is not the only gift, so it needs supplementation and context. And Reformed people don’t recognize that gift when it’s in their midst — you ever heard a Calvinistic sermon on exorcism? — so they keep trying to make CVT out to be an apologist! (Just as they tried to make Schaeffer, a man with the gift of evangelism, into a philosopher and apologist.) CVT was an exorcist of apologetics, not an apologist.
But CVT has his baggage also. It’s easier to see now. Believe me, Tim, the world was very, VERY different before the so-called ’60s, before deconstruction, before dealing with the finally redacted text became the vogue at SBL, before Vatican II, before Roe vs Wade, before homosexuality ceased to be outlawed, before the feminist movement. It is very surprising just how different the Christian world is now. The lines were drawn very differently, and the Spirit called for quite different approaches. There was no anti-abortion movement with protestants and Catholics marching together. This was all before Vatican II, when we were enemies rather than separated brethren. I could go on, but CVT was operating in a very different context. We live on the other side of a very large cultural collapse. I’m 58. I remember the beforetime.
So, I can only encourage you to try and bear that in mind, even when you think that nowadays things should be phrased quite differently.
Rewrite of last sentence: …even when you RIGHTLY perceive that nowadays things should be phrased quite differently.
Jim,
You’re not hijacking anyone’s blog, and your comments are always welcome.
A few thoughts. First, nothing you’ve said so far specifically addresses Tim’s remarks about VT’s system being a typically modern polemically motivated foundationalism, which starts from a prioris rather than from naturally fruitful encounter with created being. Since I was saying this sort of thing long before Tim was, and since Tim is exploring this thesis while I am settled in it, I am quite willing to take the brunt of any counter-claims. So far, however, you haven’t made any- which is not to say that you won’t. You do seem to wish to read VT as simply a consistently Christian thinker, just as the better writers of late antiquity and the feudal period were (though VT, and perhaps yourself? might deny this of them: about which more shortly). However, it is quite clear to me that VT’s “consistency” is the typically modernist “consistency” of the a priori deductive system, the ideal of paranoid foundationalism. Reading VT’s lame response to JW Montgomery’s essay “Once Upon an A Priori” (in “Athens and Jerusalem”, ed. Geehan) proves very revealing. And although VT does acknowledge natural revelation, etc, as S.Wedgeworth has pointed out, VT takes away with one hand what he gives with the other.
As I’ve said in earlier conversations on this topic, I have no intent to speak unkindly of VT as a man, and I even find some things of value in his theological discussions: I am willing to defend to his controversial expressions regarding the Trinity, for example. Nevertheless, until I see clear evidence otherwise, I consider my claim that VT is a typically modernist thinker to stand. No, he isn’t precisely Kant, and one can quibble over the differences: but he is very much in the same camp as Kant (and Descartes, and Husserl), and to point out the fine distinctions between VT’s epistemologizing and Kant’s is, from my vantage point, simply to miss the forest for the trees.
Now to my second concern. While I am very sympathetic to your exasperation with caricature versions of right reason, law of nations, et c, I can tell you that Calvin’s law of nations is definitely not falsified by findings of modern anthropology. But that conversation between me and you, over a litre of beer, still remains to be had; it probably can only be had in person. But I can state here that I myself have no trouble reconciling the classical tradition with, say, the reflections of Hoebel. It is relatively easy for me to do this, because Christian thinkers such as Vico have already showed how the verum and the factum, that is, the law of nature and human historicity, relate to another. Lewis too: consider in conjunction “The Abolition of Man” and the passages on the changeability of the human heart (historicity) in “Preface to Paradise Lost”. Vico, in criticizing the novel early modernist versions of natural law, expresses the same concerns you do: but he does not consider the classical tradition falsified. And Vico is not far from Aquinas’ understanding of natural law. But VT seems to have been completely incapable of reading the old Christian masters (let alone the ancient Greeks): he contented himself with straw men, like Kant’s handling of his predecessors (“inconsistently Christian”, “inconsistently Enlightened”, but now Year Zero is upon us…) in the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason. You might say this was necessitated by the nature of what apologetics is: I would say that if that is indeed the case, then to hell with apologetics.
I do not, of course, think that VT’s approach does exemplify what apologetics ought to be; so apologetics does not stand or fall with him. And thanks be to God; for if it did, we would be in a sorry state.
In closing, I would like to say that I think you read VT overkindly, and in doing so, overkindly attribute to him many of the virtues which are in fact far more distinctive of your own remarkable mind and work than they are of his. I hope that readers are not led by your defense of VT to identify your thought with his, for yours is by far more interesting.
peace
P
An afterthought, re/33 and 34: yes, it is true that manual-Thomism, which was summoned into being on cue by fiat of Leo XIII, was in many ways a mess.
But the reason why it did and does matter that CVT was ignorant of scholasticism and wrong about it, even if he got his bad information from contemporary RC, is that it in consequence meant illegitimately dismissing or even condemning vast sections of the thought of the Reformers and the later divines, who were heirs of men such as Aquinas (and in some cases, such as moral theology, much better heirs of Aquinas than the post-Trent RC divines were). One of the most notorious examples is that of Rushdoony calling Calvin “foolish and heretical” right at the beginning of IBL; a charge which perhaps rebounds to RJR on that score, for it certainly doesn’t stick to Calvin.
I was trained as a Thomist, and am Reformed, and I can say that all these old canards of scholastic “chains of being” somehow denying the creator-creature distinction, or of the five proofs leading men to an “idol”, is totally unwarranted by the texts of Thomas himself, and the reception of scholastic thought by the Reformers and later evangelical divines did not deform their doctrine.
peace
P
Peter – I sympathize with your position on CVT, notwithstanding some of its generalizations (i.e., what is “naturally fruitful encounter with created being”? – presumably you might be referring to an Acts 17ish engagement with non-Christian thought – Van Til attempts to follow that model, though I suppose we are in part debating whether or not he is tracking with an apostolic method of apologetics).
While I am more comfortable with Kuyperianism than “T”heonomy strictly speaking and re Rushdoony, it should be born in mind that the critique of Calvin was relegated to a very specific issue (whether, as you know, the so-called “civil” use of the law is to be in force for non-Israelitish nations). It was so far from being a characterization of Calvin in the main that I am surprised you did not mention it.
Similarly, the quote is a bit skewed (unintentionally). Specifically, he calls the position which argues for the abolition of the law of God over the nations as “foolish and heretical” not Calvin himself, at least as I remember (I’ve read that quote 3-4X; Nigel Lee also criticizes/flags it in his otherwise glowing endorsment of IBL).
“Foolish and heretical” was not characteristic of Rushdoony’s overall assessment of Calvin. In fact, he continually asserted that he was seeking to build upon the work of Anselm, Calvin, Kuyper, Berkhof, and Van Til, in terms of his own work. Re the application of the law of God civilly, and to the nations, he maintained that relying upon “nature” or “natural law” was precarious insofar as nature is fallen and as a fallen sinner, man of necessity must seek his principles or laws of government extra nous (I am not endorsing that argument of his, at least precisely, just putting the Calvin quote in further context).
So, the comment re Calvin should be viewed in that light.
As you’ve checked me in the past re certain infelicitous characterizations of Lutheranism, so I return the favor mi hermano!
But back to Jordan/Escalante….
Okay. First, “foundationalism” was not a term in use when I studied, or at least I never encountered it, so I’m having to brush up. If it means a coherence model of truth, CVT argues that both coherence and correspondence are necessary in his Theory of Christian Epistemology (orig. The Metaphysics of Apologetics). If it means a kind of deductivistic apriori mode of thought, CVT says that everything and every aspect of everything is equally valid as a starting point of understanding. …. Though what CVT himself did was argue with Kant, etc., who are I gather foundationalists. If he argued in foundationalist language (answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own imagination) that does not make him a F-ist.
Or, maybe in some sense CVT can be shown to have been an F-ist. But I have yet to be convinced that Christian F-ism, grounded in Genesis 1:1, is a problem. I do not see how one can escape a kind of intellectual spiral between/among apparent evidence, historic experience, basic presuppositions, paradigms, etc. All grow together, it seems to me.
On apologetics: I think a balanced understanding of CVT is that he does not deny that the traditional arguments work, in some sense. He rather seeks to purify the understanding of how and why they work. He’s engaged in an exorcism of meta-apologetics. (You notice I keep improving my expressions. It has been 20+ years since I’ve engaged these issues.) CVT says he can use all the proofs, and use all the evidences, but insists that they be understood not on neutral ground. That does not mean that in a conversation with Sophie the washerwoman you have to bring up all this presuppositional stuff. If the cosmological argument in common language helps Sophie, great. The question is WHY it helps Sophie, and CVT’s answer is because Sophie lives and moves and has her being in the Triune Creator.
He also believes that a transcendental argument arises from a presuppositional exorcism, but I do not think he would have been comfortable with Bahnsen’s attempt to make this into a proof. There is no TAG “proof” that cannot be answered by a TANG “proof,” in my opinion. The human mind is infinite, being in God’s image, and hence infinitely able to refute proofs of God. God will prove Himself at the last day in the way He does at the end of Job, and then along will every mouth be stopped. I think CVT would completely agree with that.
Now, the New Aquinas (according to Garver, who lectured on him at BH) is also opposed to the notion of neutral ground. I’m happy with that. I’ve always thought that while CVT pointed out all the places he thought were problematic in the history of Christian thought, in fact large aspects of the history of Christian thought are not foreign to CVT’s project.
I came to CVT through RJR’s *By What Standard?* It’s the stuff in that book that drew me and that interests me. Maybe that’s why I read CVT as I do.
Anyway, grist for the mill.
My inimitable Elder H,
RJR was not simply dealing with the question of the usus civilis of the Mosaic law with regard to Gentile nations, he was denying Calvin’s warrant (or rather, one of them) for saying that the Mosaic law in its usus civilis wasn’t in force for the nations: namely, the premise that natural law and remnant reason, in common grace, were sufficient for civil righteousness. So it was not so small and arcane a matter as you seem to suggest.
I do recognize that RJR considered himself a disciple of Calvin. However, I’m not sure I recognize my Calvin in RJR’s Calvin very distinctly; but that would be a different- and a long- conversation.
Natural law and reason in Calvin, or his ancient and medieval predecessors, should not be construed in a blithe, naive, Lockean or positivistic way. The traditional Christian view of these things takes full account of the Fall, historicity, and the role of the political in all this. Thus RJR was arguing against a straw man.
But I will review the passage, and I am thankful for your remarks.
Re/ “naturally fruitful encounter with being” I don’t mean an encounter with non-Christian thought, but rather, the encounter of our senses and mind with created reality as generative of knowledge, as opposed to radical skepticism which then looks to artificially ground itself in subjectivistic a prioris, et c. In other words, we don’t start with epistemologies (“Oh no, how can I KNOW that that I know?”) but with experience.
peace
P
Ok, Jim,
It seems awkward to me to call you “Jim,” since not only do I not know you in person but you are my elder and superior in the faith. I wouldn’t address my former teachers at New St. Andrews by their first names even though I do know them personally and at least in terms of my senior thesis work a few of them said I was their peer. Perhaps I’m being overly scrupulous, but it’s an issue of respect for me. However, since you told me to, I’ll call you “Jim” from here out.
Peter has just said more than I am capable of saying, and better, too. I have a lot of work to do to flesh out my concerns. I am not at present extremely well acquainted with Kant, and I recognize I need to shore that up. Also since Peter mentioned it, the issues of ancient and early Modern concepts of natural law are big areas of needed work for me. One thing I have spent a great deal of time with, however, long before I ever darkened the doors of New St. Andrews, is apologetics. I am well acquainted with the general history of apologetics (though perhaps not with apologetics at WTS), and I just have to say that the idea that Christians got the defense of the faith simply fundamentally wrong for nearly 2000 years strikes me as a claim that deserves immediate and deep skepticism and which bears the most enormous burden of proof I can think of.
There’s few better “exorcists” as you put it than, say, the Cappadocians, Augustine and Aquinas. From what I have been seeing over the last year especially, the “Hellenists” and “autonomists” are very rarely in the classical Christian tradition but instead are almost uniformly in the heretics and the Muslims. The bogeymen that Van Til wants to exorcise are in guys like Arius, Origen, Abelard, Averroes, and Siger of Brabant. They aren’t in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Dante, Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, or others like them. The latter were quite aware of where philosophy’s limits relative to revelation were, and they took enormous care to avoid compromising the faith with philosophy.
But here’s the crux of the matter, especially for Calvinists, who as a general rule love to frenetically wave their hands around while bitching about i’s and t’s and fighting about “Truth” and rending brothers to pieces in the name of “purity.” To see what’s really going on in the ancient and pre-Reformation worlds, a person just has to stop thinking that every minute of every day is a war to the knife with slavering demons outside of us and then, putting apologetics felt needs on the shelf for a while, he has to then take up and read old stuff calmly and reflectively. Aristotle and Plato and the rest can’t be profitably read by someone who sees himself as the reincarnation of Machen and his whole life about doing every single day what Machen did. Unfortunately, that’s where a whole lot of Reformed guys are, and in this light Frame’s characterization of Van Til as the “continuator of the Machen reformation” is most relevant.
If apologetics means I have to slander Augustine’s beautiful reversal of the Neoplatonic ascent theme or Dante’s magnificent use of the Aristotelian virtue / vice scheme to illustrate redemption, then as Peter said, to hell with apologetics. I speak from a great deal of experience when I say that apologetics is overrated and ought to be put on the shelf for a while so that Calvinists can actually do constructive stuff for a change. I simply have no use for a “consistent” Christianity that treats the Confessions or the Divine Comedy as the drooling gabblings of little babies who were insufficiently steeped in Divine Scripture and who thought higher of Plato than of Paul. It’s just nonsense.
Does anyone know how to prevent the terminal parenthesis mark from mysteriously transforming into an emoticon?
puzzled,
P
It does that when combined with some other key. I think it will be ok if you put a space between it and the preceding letter or symbol.
You can edit them too.
Well, I just went into the control panel and unchecked the option that tells the software to convert certain expressions into emoticons automatically. Let’s see if that helps.
Tim,
I feel we should note that although many Reformed of the VT persuasion might hold the Fathers in low esteem as babies insufficiently steeped in Scripture, we should be clear about the fact that we are not saying this of Jim. Jim’s view, whether one agrees with it or not, has to do with historical epochs of the visible church, and does not imply, since JJ is not a historicist, that all writers of any given epoch are wholly immature. It is quite possible on JJ’s account to meet an Augustine or an Eusebius as something of a peer (with all Gadamerian qualifications granted, of course). Jim’s view in this matter is, if I may make the comparison, something like a responsible and Biblically grounded version of Newman’s development of doctrine, and was held by Frederick Wilhelmsen, one of the greatest Thomists of the 20th c.
I thought we should make this clarification clear for readers’ sake.
peace
P
Sure, Peter. I have several times in these discussions (even going back a couple of months) to distinguish what I am arguing against from particular people. I hope I’ve been successful in that.
Tim,
You have been very good about making those distinctions! I was simply clarifying the point for readers who might perhaps be unfamiliar with the conversation.
peace
P
My Indubitable Brother Peter – You noted: “One of the most notorious examples is that of Rushdoony calling Calvin ‘foolish and heretical’ right at the beginning of IBL; a charge which perhaps rebounds to RJR on that score, for it certainly doesn’t stick to Calvin.
Actually, here is the quote I believe you are referencing (it begins with Rushdoony quoting Calvin at length):
Calvin: I will briefly remark however by the way, what laws it (the state) may piously use before God, and be rightly governed by among men. And even this I would have preferred passing over in silence, if I did not know that it is a point on which many persons run into dangerous errors. For some deny that a state is well constituted, which neglects the polity of nations. The dangerous and seditious nature of this opinion I leave to the examination of others; it will be sufficient for me to have evinced it to be false and foolish (Institutes IV ch. 20, para 14).
Rushdoony: Such ideas, common in Calvinist and Lutheran circles and in virtually all churches, are still heretical nonsense. Calvin favored the “common law of nations.” But the common law of nations in his day was Biblical law, although extensively denatured by Roman law (he may mean “denuded” here – Hoss). And this “common law of nations” was increasingly evidencing a new religion, humanism. Calvin wanted the establishment of Christian religion; he could not have it, nor could it last long in Geneva without biblical law.
Two Reformed scholars, in writing of the state declare, “It is to be God’s servant for our welfare. It must exercise justice, and it has the power of the sword (he is referring to de Jongste and Van Kimpen here)”. Yet these men follow Calvin in rejecting biblical law for the “common law of nations.” But can the state be God’s servant and bypass God’s law? And if the state “must exercise justice”, how is justice to be defined, by nations or by God? There are as many ideas of justice as there are religions… (pp. 9-10 IBL Vol. 1).
Now, apart from our debating the merit of Rushdoony’s argument, it should be admitted that he really is not calling Calvin foolish and heretical, or speaking of him characteristically so. His central point is, even as he states a bit later, “by abandoning biblical law, these Protestant theologians end up in moral and legal relativism” and that “revealed law is the need and privilege of Christian society” and that “apart from revealed law, man cannot claim to be under God, but only in rebellion against God” (p. 10).
What is interesting about Calvin is the fact that he took back with his right hand what was given with the left, viz. in a sense, practicing a kind of de facto theonomy in Geneva, while theoretically denying the abiding validity of the civil use of the law. Both his antagonists and his friends have admitted as much about Calvin……
It may be that you don’t recognize your Calvin in Rushdoony, but the same would hold for the heirs of Calvin 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation, the last of which produced several portions of the WCF which were later redacted by American Presbyterians in 1788, and which are abominated by Klinians and others to this day….
Your Bud
Hoss
Tim-
Amen to the last two paragraphs of #52. Lots of plain contentious people have been attracted to Van Tillianism as a way to win arguments and be right. Often these are people who will only ever resonate with the 5% of the population who are just like them, and they all stand together and call the other 95% compromisers for not wanting to bring up a hot, bitter cultural argument for “truth” right after exchanging introductions with people. It strikes me as perpetual adolescence.
It cannot be denied that so much of CVT’s program was self-referential, terminating solely upon internecine concerns of the Calvinists. Hardly any people outside of the Reformed world have taken notice, largely for that reason.
This is unfortunate, as no doubt, Van Til had tremendous pathos for lost people, and even street-preached.
Say what one will about Schaeffer, at least he sought to export the model, albeit in a manner Van Til was not happy with, and engage the wider culture.
Jason/et al: – The following brief critique of Kline, by a good friend of mine, Andrew Sandlin should be read, along with the more extensive critique of several pages offered by Bahnsen at the conclusion of his THEONOMY IN CHRISTIAN ETHICS.
Also, Jim Jordan has written some very helpful words of caution against Kline’s program both in his work on Creation as well viz. the more informal Web venue.
But here is Sandlin:
Kline is a top-notch OT scholar and is generally reputed as such. His path-breaking work in ancient Semitic culture has been a boon to OT studies, but I do have three serious reservations on his work:
First, his “intrusionist ethics” is, well, an intrusion onto Mosaic ethics and does not arise from the text itself. It seems a clear case of (fanciful) Biblical theology swallowing up rigorous exegesis. No NT writer interpreted the Law as Kline does.
Second, his unremitting defense of the “covenant of works” and, in particular, the merit principle, seems to allow for no modification of the scholastic formulation. He is dogged to the point of arrogance on this issue.
Third, and most distressing, I have always gotten the sense that he often imposes on the Biblical text the products of his invaluable studies of Semitic culture, ancient suzerain treaties, and ancient Near Eastern world pictures rather than read the text as it stands in its historical (distinctly Hebraic) milieu. I have no doubt that the Biblical writers shared certain of this culture’s assumptions (a three-decker universe, etc.), but Kline seems sometimes to miss the distinctiveness of the Hebraic world view.
That said, some of his insights in (e.g.) The Structure of Biblical Authority are little short of breathtaking.
I would add to Sandlin’s perspective by noting that Kline himself admitted that the early Reformers ALONG WITH the Puritans, believed that the Civil Magistrate was bound to the Law of God and its enforcement, and thus, that his exotic notion of “intrusion” was not consistent with the position of the Magisterial Reformed or the later Puritans. Kline lamented the fact that it was doubtful to his mind whether theonomists could be smoked out of the PCA and OPC since their forebears taught much the same thing that these guys did.
All of this from a Kuyperian, not a “T”heonomist, I might add.
Best
Hoss
Elder Hoss,
I appreciate your qualifications, but RJR in the passage cited is clearly referring to Calvin’s own idea, Calvin’s own doctrine, as “foolish and heretical nonsense”.
I understand RJR’s point regarding what he takes to be the inevitable slide into relativism consequent upon denying the abiding civil use of the Mosaic law: I just happen to think that he is profoundly wrong, since I trust God’s providence and our prudentia to manage things; whereas RJR wanted to engineer political ordo via a technique, the law.
You are right to point out the objectionable aspects of Calvin’s Geneva and the “bloody tenet” of the later Presbyterians: and in fact, in theory, a theonomous system in RJR’s sense (though still obnoxious) might be more practically libertarian than JC’s non-Mosaic republic was, since Geneva was an instance of the general disciplinarian tendency of early modern bourgeois polities, a tendency which was pretty frightful in many respects (and which wholly transcended confessional lines).
peace
P
Peter – I think we are, as usual, quite sympatico here. For the record, having read probably 20 or so volumes from Rushdoony, I take his hermeneutical method to be wooden at points (his commentaries are his worst volumes, among some gems) and – perhaps more tellingly – unsubstantiated by apostolic practice post-resurrection with regard to say, Paul’s interaction with the state.
This is where, I think, the 3-fold distinction the Reformed have typically utilized in viewing the law is helpful, such that WCF can speak about the “general equity” of the law as being in force in and among the nations, but not going so far as a Rushdoony or Bahnsen, helpful as both of them were in many respects.
Let’s talk soon.
Tu Hermano
Hoss
Elder H,
As usual, quite sympatico.
I do hold, as I think you know, to the doctrine of the general equity of the law being very much in force in the political order worldwide, and consider legal positivism or true relativism to be a kind of madness. The problem with the WW-ish version of the Two Kingdoms (or what would be a much better translation of Luther’s idea : “dual governance”) is that the mantle of rule, and the art of choreographing the performance of equity, seems to be on that account something the Christian has nothing to say about, and nothing to do with. But this would be a very bad reading of Luther and Calvin.
peace
P
If Princeton is any indication being “confessional” is no guarantee that a seminary will not go liberal. Other indications of this are Calvin Theological Seminary, of the Dutch Reformed tradition, and Fuller Theological Seminary. Both of the latter seminaries are clearly headed toward liberalism if they are not already there.
I earned my M.Div. from Asbury Theological Seminary in the Wesleyan tradition. Ironically I became a Calvinist while a student at Asbury. Asbury claims to be Evangelical but its theological positions are increasingly on the neo-orthodox or liberal side of things. Asbury as well seems to be headed toward liberalism.
If Westminster Theological Seminary can manage not to in that direction, more power to them. However, I don’t think Peter Enns is the only closet liberal at WTS. There are others who place more emphasis on higher criticism than on defending the confessional faith and the Holy Scriptures. Whatever happened to the fundamentalism of J. Gresham Machen??????
Charlie